Directly following the recent enactment of the Anti-Terrorism Law (ATL) is the current anticommunist witchhunting drive against progressive and democratic organizations and movements, threatening activists, artists, parliamentarians and even local government officials. High government officials brandish their additional fascist powers in the hope of repressing democratic rights and suppress the forces fighting the ruling regime.

Anticommunist witchhunting is a dirty tactic of the power-hungry regime. Legal democratic forces are being outrightly linked to the revolutionary armed movement.

Under the Duterte terrorist regime, the fascist generals were emboldened to spew poison and lies against the legal and democratic forces and against the revolutionary movement. With the ATL, they aim to use the full force of the terrorist state to completely suppress the legal democratic movement that has long served as a fortress of the Filipino people’s militant resistance.

Illegalization of progressive organizations is the ultimate objective of these measures of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and the AFP. They aim to repeat how Marcos’ 1972 martial law declared illegal all forms of mass organizations. The NTF-ELCAC and the AFP are now using the ATL to make its anti-democratic policies appear legitimate and legal.

But instead of formally filing charges of “terrorism” against these organizations, as provided for by the ATL, the NTF-ELCAC is resorting to witchhunting to clampdown on the legal and democratic forces. However, except for the claims of a discredited “witness,” the NTF-ELCAC could not provide evidence to prove its accusations against the legal national democratic organizations as “fronts” of the CPP and “recruiters” of the NPA.

The AFP and NTF-ELCAC expanded the scope of counterinsurgency to target even the non-armed forces. The intensified anticommunist witchhunting drive is part of the campaign of violence against the progressive and legal forces, that include the successive killings against mass leaders and activists. Only within the month of October, no less than eight activists were arrested.

To justify counterinsurgency and use “anti-terrorism” against the revolutionary movement, the AFP and the NTF-ELCAC obscure the difference between communism and terrorism, in order to obfuscate the justness of waging revolutionary struggle and the taking up of arms, especially against a tyranny. Terrorism or the use of violence against civilians or people not taking part in the armed conflict, run counter to international laws of war. This is a crime which the Party firmly condemns.

By accusing the Party of “terrorism,” the NTF-ELCAC seek to deny the status of belligerency of the Party and NPA and the firm adherence of the revolutionary armed forces to the standards of human rights, rules of war and humanitarian laws. They use terrorist-labeling against the Party to justify the termination of peace talks and the launching of a relentless, dirty, costly and corruption-riddled war.

Instead of being paralyzed by fear and intimidation by the anticommunist witchhunting, more sectors are rising up and pushing back against the NTF-ELCAC and the Duterte regime’s fascism. As anticommunist persecution against democratic and progressive forces and suppression of democratic rights intensify, the people’s outrage is more and more stoked. Even various personalities and officials are roused to speak up against the AFP and NTF-ELCAC clampdown against national democratic forces.

It is just to condemn and renounce the AFP’s red-tagging and asset the “activism is not terrorism.” In addition, it must also be asserted that neither is it terrorism to bear arms, to follow the path of Bonifacio and Sakay, to call for revolutionary change and wage a war for national liberation. That armed struggle is a right that cannot be taken away from the oppressed and the subjugated and recognized since ancient times. That under a system where power is monopolized by a few, the impoverished and disenfranchised masses have no other more effective way of defending their rights and fighting for their cause than bearing arms. That the people’s war being waged by the NPA aims to achieve national freedom and social justice and is just in the face of treachery and oppression by the ruling reactionary classes.

In clamping down against the democratic forces and increasing restrictions against freedom of expression, the necessity and justness of waging armed struggle as means of defending the people and fighting terrorist suppression by the tyrannical regime become even clearer. By perpetrating more extrajudicial killings, unlawful arrests and detention, and by intensifying the fascist regime’s attacks and denying the people’s right to organize and protest, Duterte himself is pushing more and more people to the path of armed struggle.

The NPA must take advantage of the favorable social and political conditions to strengthen and expand its ranks. Recruitment of new Red fighters from among workers, intellectuals, employees and other urban sectors must be strengthened, while sustaining recruitment from the rural masses. The NPA must continue to mount tactical offensives and expand and intensify guerrilla wardfare across the country.

Tactical offensives must be intensified in response to the clamor for justice of the masses victimized by the AFP fascist terrorist units. There must also be more tactical offensives in order to stretch the forces of the AFP to prevent it from concentrating forces to carry out suppression in the cities. News of NPA victories inspire and embolden the resistance of the democratic forces in their fight to end Duterte’s fascist tyranny.